Thursday, September 4, 2008

The Frenchocrat Attack Machine

In 1981, former Harry Truman consigliere and LBJ Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford memorably labeled the new Republican sheriff in town an "amiable dunce." At the time, Clifford was the living embodiment of the Washington establishment, and his glib analysis showed that while you can find the occasional memorable phrase on the D.C. cocktail circuit, facile conclusions delight the crowd more than serious inquiry. It comes as no small irony that in the years that followed, the discovery of Reagan's voluminous private writings revealed him to be the finest writer and most original political philosopher to sit in the Oval Office since at least Theodore Roosevelt. As for the condescending genius Mr. Clifford, he ended up the 1980s enmeshed in the BCCI scandal, thanks largely to his own confusion. At least that's how he told the story, complaining to the New York Times, "I have a choice of seeming either stupid or venal." Clifford opted for the former.

However obtuse, Clifford's summation of Reagan sat on the cutting edge of a new school of political partisanship. Starting with Gerald Ford, the inside-the-beltway class and its amplifiers in the media have routinely decided that Republicans who seek national office are dullards. Literally every Republican candidate for president since 1980 has had his intellect belittled. Even Bob Dole, a candidate who had spent decades proving his remarkable mental acuity in Congress, had to face such salvos because his age had allegedly dulled his mental edge. Sound vaguely familiar?

The Republican should have her on TV all the time. She is attractive articulate and natural and no one who watches her is going fail to see her intelligence.